


(He Wouldn’t Say) Kidnappings Were a Routine Part of his Career

by Bumblie_Bee



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Head Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Dirk, Kidnapping, Poor Dirk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-03-22 13:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13765068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bumblie_Bee/pseuds/Bumblie_Bee
Summary: Dirk is woken by something colliding with his face. Hard. He opens his eyes, and at first the room around him is hazy and dark, but as his eyes adjust and the blurriness clears a little, he sees he’s in what looks to be a warehouse and realises that the ‘something’ that had collided with his face was, in fact, probably a fist. Which would make it more of a ‘someone’ than a ‘something’, if he’s going to be precise.





	1. Punch-Happy Thugs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk is woken by something colliding with his face. Hard. He opens his eyes, and at first the room around him is hazy and dark, but as his eyes adjust and the blurriness clears a little, he sees he’s in what looks to be a warehouse and realises that the ‘something’ that had collided with his face was, in fact, probably a fist. Which would make it more of a ‘someone’ than a ‘something’, if he’s going to be precise

Dirk is woken by something colliding with his face. Hard. He opens his eyes, and at first the room around him is hazy and dark, but as his eyes adjust and the blurriness clears a little, he sees he’s in what looks to be a warehouse and realises that the ‘something’ that had collided with his face was, in fact, probably a fist. Which would make it more of a ‘someone’ than a ‘something’, if he’s going to be precise. 

He doesn’t remember how he ended up in the warehouse, but between the headache that is slowly becoming more apparent and the blood he can feel sticking in his hair and the thin plastic he can feel holding his wrists together, it isn’t a very difficult guessing game. 

He wouldn’t say kidnappings are a routine part of his career, but this certainly isn’t the first time it has happened either. He wonders whether Todd and Farah have noticed he is missing yet. It’s difficult to decide either way because he doesn’t know how long he’s been gone or what he was doing when he was taken.

He blinks the room into focus and sees there are two men standing in front of him. One man is tall and weedy looking while the other is shorter and bulkier, his clothing stretched tight over his belly and his arms showing muscle under their own layers of fat, but both are wearing the same black hoodies and balaclavas and fierce expressions. Not that Dirk can see much of their expressions, but their eyes certainly don’t look very friendly.

“I think I’d consider it rude to greet people by punching them, but each to one’s own,” he says, raising an eyebrow. He had been aiming to sound nonchalant, as if being woken by a punch to the face in a dark room is routine and no cause for concern but the heightened pitch and the slight tremor in his tone kind of give the game away. He realises that he’s beginning to feel rather sick.

“Shut it, smart mouth,” growls the shorter of the two men, raising a fist in what Dirk assumes is meant to be a threatening manner. 

“Who are you working for?” says the taller man. His voice is rough and low and Dirk wonders if he normally sounds so peculiar or if he’s purposefully trying to disguise his voice. Disguising his voice would be good, Dirk decides, because if the men don’t want him to know who they are, then that maybe means they’re planning to release him. Although, he realises that seeing as he has no idea who the men are or what they want from him, his logic may be a little flawed.

“Who are you, exactly?” he asks, looking between the two men. Neither of them look familiar to him, or sound familiar either, and he doesn’t remember being on a case, although his memories of the day are patchy at best so maybe he had been investigating the men after all. The second man steps forward and thrusts his fist into Dirks stomach. He doubles over, wheezing. 

“I said ‘who are you working for?’” the first man repeats. He says it louder this time and it echoes around the room and Dirk winces as it resonates in his aching head. 

“There’s no need to shout,” he says, glaring up at the man. The punch to his cheek isn’t entirely unexpected given that he has been kidnapped by the men, but the sudden tilting of the chair catches him by surprise and he yelps as it topples over backwards. His head hits the concrete floor with a crack that clatters his teeth and his vision goes black in a flash of blinding pain.

Dirk is dragged back to consciousness by someone slapping his cheek. It’s better than a punch, but whoever it is isn’t being exactly gentle and he groans involuntarily. Someone says something he doesn’t quite understand and then there’s a hand grasped around his arm, pulling him roughly back onto the now re-righted seat. 

The room is spinning and blurred when he forces his eyes open and the once dull headache is so sharp his head feels about to split with each pounding heartbeat. He swallows against the feeling of nausea which is rapidly making itself more and more apparent in his gut. He’s had more than enough experience with head injuries to know the signs of a concussion when he feels them.

“Let’s try again, shall we?” says the taller man with an air of impatience. Dirk tries to think what he’s meant to be trying again, but his mind is hazy and he can’t quite remember what is happening. He tries to think back to what he had been doing before he woke up in the warehouse, but there’s nothing he can remember. He wishes he hadn’t followed whatever stupid hunch had led him to this situation. He’s always been better at getting himself into unfortunate situations than he is at getting out of them. 

He’s startled from his thoughts by a fist colliding with his stomach and he curls up as much as his bindings (he’s tied up, why hadn’t he noticed before?) will allow, winded and in pain and the nausea that had been bubbling inside him boils over and suddenly he vomits onto the floor. Some of it splashes on his shoes which is sad because he likes his shoes. Some of it ends up on the shorter man’s shoes too and the man shouts in disgust and punches him again as if he thinks that’ll solve the situation. 

He groans and falls forwards, hanging limply against his bindings as more pain blooms in his head. He hears footsteps and then there’s a hand in his hair and he yelps as his head is hauled back up. The taller man is squatting in front of him, his face inches from Dirks. He tries to pull away but the hand in his hair is holding tight.

“Who. Are. You. Working. For?” the first man asks for a third time. His teeth are gritted, judging by the sound of his voice, and Dirk finds the yelling doesn’t exactly improve the pounding in his head or the spinning of the room. The man shakes him, his hand still entwined in his hair.

“Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency,” he replies with as much strength as he can muster. It doesn’t come out quite as strongly as he’d like, and the words sound slurred even to his own ears. He hadn’t expected them to sound slurred. Dirk wonders just how hard he’d hit his head when the chair tipped over. 

“What’s what detective agency?” the man asks, scowling. The man has apparently never heard of him before and Dirk would probably be insulted if he wasn’t too busy trying not to vomit onto his shoes for a second time. 

“Dirk Gently’s, I’m Dirk Gently,” he says, blinking slowly up at the taller man. He’s surprised by the effort it takes him just to say his own name. 

“Like a private detective?” the man asks. He looks confused. Dirk nods in confirmation. He doesn’t have the energy to explain that he’s a holistic detective, not a private one, although he is private too, so he guesses the man might be right after all.

“You’re not with the police? Or the FBI? Or the CIA?” Dirk slowly shakes his head to each question. It makes the room spin more but the nausea is building again and opening his mouth doesn’t seem the best of ideas. 

The man swears and finally the hand in his hair releases its grip and he slumps forwards, not having the energy to keep himself upright. The men are talking, about him, he’d imagine, and he tries to listen to what they’re saying but just staying awake is almost more effort than he is capable of and he fades in and out of their conversation. Their voices sound distant and muffled and he finds even the words he does hear make very little sense. 

The men start speaking to him again at some point, he doesn’t know when, but suddenly there’s another fist hitting his stomach and one of the men is shouting at him to listen. He opens his eyes to look at the men. He doesn’t remember closing them in the first place and his head is hurting almost unbearably and he can’t seem to get his vision to focus properly. 

“Who hired you?” the man asks. Dirk blinks slowly. He doesn’t understand the question because he’s already told the man that he’s a private detective, hasn’t he? He doesn’t work for anyone? 

“Dirk Gently’s Hollis-” 

“No, to investigate!” The man interrupts. His voice is painfully loud. Dirk thinks he might have heard himself whimper. He understands what the man is asking now though.

“No one,” he mutters, looking up at the man. This might not be true, since his memories of the day are muddled and patchy and although he doesn’t remember being hired by a client, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. 

“So why were you following us?” the man exclaims, holding up his hands in frustration. 

“Hunch?” he says, and it’s a guess because he still can’t remember what he had been doing when the men had taken him, but it was more likely a hunch that had lead him to this situation than anything else.

“You were following us on a hunch?” the man sounds more confused that fierce now and the second man, the one who seems to be more punchy and less talky, looks equally baffled.

In retrospect, it must have been a pretty poor hunch to follow, but that’s the problem with his hunches, he never knows why the universe is telling him to do something until he does it. 

There’s also the chance he followed the hunch wrong, maybe the universe had been telling him to call the police about these chaps, or call Farah for back up before he followed them, or just avoid them at all costs because they’re clearly dangerous punch-happy thugs who have knocked his head one too many times for him to think straight any more. 

The man prods him again, expecting an answer, and Dirk mumbles something about the universe always taking him where he needs to be and the overall interconnectedness of all things but his mind really is spinning and very little of it makes sense even to him. 

His head is pounding and his vision is swimming and he feels about to throw up. He’s had more experience with head injuries over the 16 years since he left Blackwing than would be considered healthy, but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt this ill because of one before. He wonders for the first time whether these men have maybe caused something more problematic than just a concussion. 

“How hard did you hit him?” he hears the taller man ask. Too hard, he thinks, much too hard. The man who does most of the talking seems to agree. The men are speaking again but he doesn’t have the energy to listen and he fades out. He wants to be at home, in bed, to sleep off the hopefully-just-a-concussion. He wonders if he’s going to make it home, or see Todd again, or Farah, or Amanda, or the Rowdy 3. The question isn’t just whether the men will release him anymore, but whether whatever is wrong inside his head is going to kill him before they do.

“Wake up!” he hears, and it sounds almost distant. He opens his eyes to find the room is blurry again and it doesn’t clear when he blinks. His stomach rolls and he vomits again. He thinks it might have hits his shoes this time, but he finds he doesn’t really care. 

“What do you know?” the man asks, his voice sounds less angry and more urgent than it had before.

“I never know anything, ever,” Dirk replies, and the words are so slurred that even he can barely understand what he’s said. His eyes are drifting shut again, it takes so much effort just to keep them open and he doesn’t have the energy any more. He wonders if he is dying. 

He realises he wouldn’t mind dying, in a way, because the year he’s spent with Todd and Farah and their detective agency is the happiest year he’s ever had, one he could not have envisioned during his stays at Blackwing and if it is his time to go, then he’s grateful for the time he got to spend with them. 

Back in the warehouse, one of the men sighs and then the man who does the talking says something about his brain being trashed. There’s more talking that Dirk can’t quite understand, and then the taller man says something about not needing any more bodies on their hands and tells the shorter man to put him back in the van.  
Dirk would smile if he had the energy because, although he doesn’t quite understand whether being put in the van is a good thing or not, maybe, just maybe, it means he’s going home after all.


	2. Yellow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dirk feels like he’s flying. 
> 
> He can’t feel the ground beneath him and his limbs are weightless. Although, realistically, him flying wouldn’t really make any sense as, despite his project name being Icarus, the man who flew to close to the sun, he can’t actually fly. He wonders if, maybe, this is what dying feels like, if maybe he is dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this second chapter and thank you for reading!
> 
> Constructive Criticism Appreciated!

Dirk feels like he’s flying. 

He can’t feel the ground beneath him and his limbs are weightless. Although, realistically, him flying wouldn’t really make any sense as, despite his project name being Icarus, the man who flew to close to the sun, he can’t actually fly. He wonders if, maybe, this is what dying feels like, if maybe he is dying. He remembers being in the warehouse with the two highly contrasting men, and he remembers the pain in his head and the spinning of the room and vomiting onto his shoes, and he wonders if he has met his untimely death investigating for a case he doesn’t even remember.

It’s a little unfortunate, he thinks, because he doesn’t really want to die. At least his head doesn’t seem to be pounding the way it was before.

He’s startled from his thoughts when the ground rushes up to meet him and he realises he wasn’t dying, or flying, but falling, and falling turns out to hurt quite a bit more than dying does. 

Or so he guesses anyway because it turns out that dying isn’t something he has experienced. 

He lands on rough ground that scuffs at his skin with a thud that reignites the pounding in his head and sends embers of pain up and down his arm. He couldn’t remember his arm hurting before. He forces his eyes open to find himself laying on a road. The light around him is dim and yellow and he realises it’s night. Not that it being night helps him to establish anything; he still doesn’t know when he was taken. Or why he had been wherever he had been taken from in the first place, for that matter. 

He realises suddenly that he knows worryingly little, he has no idea where he is or what time it is, or what is wrong with his head or his arm. But what he does know is that he needs to get home, to Todd and Farah, and at that moment, that is all he needs to know. 

He pushes himself to his feet, which is harder than he had anticipated because his wrists are still handcuffed together and every movement sends pain stabbing down his arm, but he makes it in the end. The world is more sway-y and spinney and blurry than he remembered but he blinks to clear his vision and the street comes into some resemblance of focus. 

He doesn’t recognise any of the buildings he can see lining the road and his heart drops a little because it would be a lot easier to find his way home if he knew in which direction he should be looking, but there’s a shop with a yellow sign in the distance so he heads towards that. 

Yellow is a good colour, he likes yellow, it matches his yellow jacket. The original yellow leather jacket had been his favourite not just because of the colour, but because it had been the first item of clothing he’d worn that had really made him feel like himself. 

He didn’t remember what he had worn before Blackwing, but then Blackwing happened and there had been years and years of those rough grey jumpsuits, and then even after he had escaped from the CIA and made it home to England, he wouldn’t have wanted to draw any more attention to himself than he naturally did even if he had had the money to spend on such items of clothing. 

Dirk stumbles and puts out his hands to catch himself against a wall. Looking up, he realises it’s the wall of the building with the bright yellow sign. The building turns out to be a shop selling some sort of electricals, but the lights inside it are off and the shop is clearly closed. Dirk had hoped the shop would have had people in it, someone who could point him towards home, or better still, phone for a taxi to take him there. 

Looking up the road, he can see a shop with blue sign and decides to head to that next for no reason other than he had had a jacket which would match the colour of the sign almost perfectly. He had lost that jacket too. Or maybe not lost, because he knows that one had been put in the bin, but jackets don’t tend be to be much use once they’re bloodstained and have two holes in one shoulder. He hadn’t got around to replacing the blue jacket. 

He still hasn’t seen another person by the time he reaches the building with the blue sign which is disappointing because his head is really starting to spin and he’s still got no idea where he is. The shop with the blue sign is disappointing too because, although the lights are on, they’re only dimly shining on stacks of plates and glasses in the window display. Dirk pauses outside the shop and leans against the wall, his eyes closed as he tries to steady the spinning in his head and calm the nausea that is slowly growing in his stomach. The ground beneath his feet doesn’t feel flat at all.

He follows a purple sign next. The shop under the purple sign has lights on inside and so is casting a dim halo of light onto the road. In the soft lighting, he can see people standing in the window of the shop and his heart leaps in his chest.

He had had a purple jacket once, but it wasn’t made of leather and he’d only worn it briefly. It was the one he had found in the sheriff’s evidence store during the case in Bergsberg with the fantasy land and the lost boy and the power-hungry mage. He looks back on that case fondly because, despite the depressive mood he had been in for most of it and the bullet that had ended up in his leg, it was a case he never thought he would get the chance to solve. 

Although, technically, all the post Blackwing-point-two cases are cases he never thought he would have the chance to solve, so maybe he should look back on them all with equal fondness. 

The figures in the window turn out the be mannequins which does make sense, now that he thinks about it, but is disappointing all the same. He leans against the window of the shop because his head is spinning and he’s beginning to lose trust in his sense of balance. His arm is throbbing too, and in the dim glow from the shop window he notices that there appears to be a bend in it where there really shouldn’t be one. He closes his eyes and swallows against the wave of nausea that is swilling threateningly in his gut.

He wakes up slumped against the building with the purple sign. He doesn’t remember falling asleep and he doesn’t remember sitting down. His vision is a little clearer and his stomach is more settled and he really should be getting home because Todd might be starting to worry by now so he pushes himself to his feet and heads towards a shop with an orange sign in the distance. 

He still has an orange jacket, it’s at home in his flat, in the Ridgley, he thinks. Todd’s flat is in that building too. He’d like to be in Todd’s flat even more than he’d like to be in his own, he decides. 

He follows a pink sign next, and then a green and then a red and then another yellow. He loses track of the colours after that because his thoughts aren’t making all that much sense any more. His head is very, very spinney and his legs shake and he stumbles against the walls of the buildings he passes as he walks. His head is hurting almost too much to bear, a heavy thud like a relentless drum that beats in time with his pounding heart. 

He thinks the next building he heads towards might be for the Ridgley. The building looks mostly right, and there’s certainly something carved into the stone above the doorway, but his vision is blurred and his head is so muddled that he doubts he could read the sign even if it was in focus. When he reaches the stone steps he knows he’s at the right building because he can see the mismatched doors from where one had been replaced after the Rowdy 3 had come searching for him during his very first case. 

Dirk’s heart is beating in is throat as he climbs the steps because he is so nearly home it hurts. 

He reaches his door first but that isn’t where he is headed so he stumbles on and up the stairs until he reaches the door to Todd’s flat. The door doesn’t open when he pushes on it, which isn’t entirely unexpected because Todd had eventually fixed the lock after the Rowdies broke it, so he knocks on the door. It isn’t really a knock, he doesn’t have the coordination for that anymore and his wrists are still handcuffed together and one of his arms is really throbbing so he more slaps at the wood uncoordinatedly. 

For a moment nothing happens and the flat is silent inside, but then he hears clattering followed by footsteps and his heart picks up because his knocking must have worked, however uncoordinated it had been. 

He doesn’t realise he is leaning on the door until it opens. He stumbles forwards, his balance lost as the room tilts around him. He falls to the floor slower than he thought he would, and at first, he wonders if there’s a localised lack of gravity in the flat, it would be the first gravity related case he’s had, but then he realises there is a set of arms locked around him and so whoever had opened the door must have caught him as he fell. 

When the flat comes back into focus Dirk realises that he’s lying on his side on the grubby floor of Todd’s apartment and Todd himself is kneeling beside his head. He guesses it was Todd that had caught him, and likely opened the door too, which makes sense, really, as it is his flat. Todd is saying something to him, Dirk can hear his voice, but the sounds he can hear seem random and his muddled brain doesn’t seem capable of forming them into words.

Dirk smiles, because despite the pounding in his head and the throbbing in his arm and the nausea rolling in his stomach, he has made it home to Todd. On the very first case he’d solved with Todd, he’d said that the universe never helps him, and now he realises that that statement might not be so true after all.

“I’m home, Todd,” he says, “I followed the jackets.” His voice is so slurred that he doubts Todd will have understood what he said. Todd’s expression confirms it and he says something else Dirk doesn’t understand and reaches out to pull a tuft of blood coated hair away from his eyes. 

“You’re like the pot of gold at the end of the jacket-bow,” he mumbles happily. He smiles tiredly and tries to push himself upright because he can’t really see Todd very well from where he is laying. Todd puts a hand on his shoulder, holding him down and tells him to lay still. Dirk isn’t sure why that had made sense to him, but decides it must be important so he relaxes back onto the carpet. 

For the first time, he really sees Todd’s expression, and he realises that Todd doesn’t look happy, he isn’t smiling and his eyes are wide and the brows above them are furrowed. Dirk realises that he looks worried, or maybe concerned, he can’t remember if there’s a difference.

Dirk hadn’t meant to worry Todd. He wants to tell him that he’s fine, that there’s no need to worry because he’s home now and he didn’t die back in the warehouse like he thought he had, but his head is hurting and muddled and he’s utterly exhausted and he realises that telling Todd he’s fine is going to have to wait as his vision darkens and he fades unwillingly into unconsciousness.


	3. Cyborg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he wakes next, the lights are dim and the room is quiet save for the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights and a rhythmic beeping he knows he should be able to place but can’t. His thoughts are cloudy and he feels numb, floaty even, in a way that points to drugs. He doesn’t remember taking any drugs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo, I've just learnt that the series has been properly cancelled and I'm kind of broken by this information #sendhelp

When Dirk wakes up, the world is noisy and smells of disinfectant and is much too bright behind his eyelids. His head is throbbing and the light hurts but when he tries to turn away he realises he’s been restrained and there’s something hard around his neck keeping his head fixed towards the light. 

His mind flickers back to his time at Blackwing, where bright lights and the sharp tang of disinfectant had accompanied him for years. He knows he isn’t in Blackwing, he’s spent enough of his life there to recognise it even with his eyes shut and his head swimming, but he can’t quite work out where he is either and his heart picks up. 

He hadn’t ever been tied down at Blackwing either, why bother when they could just lock him in his room, but something in his muddled brain is telling him to run and he can’t help but fight the straps holding him down. Pushing against the restraints worsens the throbbing in his head and whatever is around his neck digs uncomfortably into his chin but his panicked mind doesn’t care.

And then there is a hand wrapping around his own and someone is shushing him and he stills, his heart still pounding in his throat. The hand gently squeezes his and it’s soft and caring in a way he hasn’t felt since he was young and living back in England with his mother and he makes a noise somewhere between a sob and a sigh. 

The voice, it’s Todd’s voice, his hazy mind supplies, tells him he’s going to be okay and then there’s another voice which he doesn’t recognise and a coldness creeping into his arm and then the bright lights behind his eyelids fades blissfully back to darkness. 

 

When he wakes next, the lights are dim and the room is quiet save for the soft buzz of the fluorescent lights and a rhythmic beeping he knows he should be able to place but can’t. He can hear someone else beside him and he wants to know who but he doubts even if his mind wasn’t swimming he would be able to identify the person from the sound of their breathing. 

His thoughts are cloudy and he feels numb, floaty even, in a way that points to drugs. He doesn’t remember taking any drugs.

Something is tickling his nose and when he reaches up to itch it, he learns there’s plastic tubing taped to his face. He tries to pull it off but he finds he doesn’t he doesn’t have the coordination to grip the tube or the strength to pull it away. It turns out he isn’t meant to remove it anyway, as a hand finds his and gently pries it away from his face. 

“No, Dirk, don’t do that,” a voice says, and he knows he knows the voice but it sounds so distant he can’t work out who it belongs to. He pulls his hand back and something tugs at the skin on the back of it and it hurts. 

He realises, really quite suddenly, that he doesn’t feel very well at all. His head is pounding in a dull, heavy sort of way and even with his eyes closed everything feels like its spinning and the sensation is making him feel kind of sea-sick. He groans and tries to roll onto his side but it turns out he doesn’t have the strength for that either and all he achieves is weakly turning his face towards the pillow. 

The hand finds his again and holds it tightly enough that he can’t pull away but gently enough not to hurt. The thumb rubs soft circles over his knuckles. 

The voice is shushing him, and it tells him to sleep and he wants to protest because why should he be doing what this unknown person is telling him to do, but between the pounding in his muddled head and the drugs swimming in his system, he finds he has little choice in the matter and is dragged unwillingly back into unconsciousness. 

 

Dirk knows he is in the hospital next time he wakes. He can place the rhythmic beeping as a heart monitor and knows it’s the tickle of oxygen beneath his nose. He doesn’t quite remember exactly how he got there, but he remembers being in a warehouse with the two punch-happy thugs, and he remembers walking and a rainbow of signs and he vaguely remembers being in Todd’s apartment and saying something about pots of gold. 

He remembers being somewhere noisy with too-bright lights that had hurt his pounding head and given him the irrational feeling that he had been back in Blackwing. He remembers being unable to move and unable to turn his head away from the light and he now knows he must have been in A&E (or the ER, actually, because he’s in America, in Seattle, and he has Todd and Farah and a Detective agency and that’s all terribly exciting) likely strapped to a backboard, his neck held still by a brace. 

He feels better than he had then; his head isn’t pounding any more but his brain feels muddled and slow, like thinking through the thick, sticky syrup Todd puts on his pancakes. He no longer feels like he’s spinning either, and is relieved to find the nausea it had caused has faded. 

He can hear the breathing of a person sat beside him and he knows it’s Todd who is there, call it a hunch, and his heart does a little jump of delight because although he’s woken up in hospitals more times than could probably be considered normal, he’s never before woken up to find someone sat beside his bed. Until recently, he hasn’t had anyone who would care enough to even visit him. 

The beeps of the heart monitor speed up accordingly, and he hears rustling beside him and the sound of a chair creaking as someone pushes themselves to their feet. 

“Dirk?” It’s Todd’s voice, he recognises it this time. 

Dirk hums in response and forces his leaden eyelids to flutter open.

The room is white and blurry and when he finally blinks it into focus he realises he’s looking at the ceiling. He tries to lift his head, looking for Todd, but finds it to be considerably heavier than he had anticipated. There’s a click of a button and then a whirring sound and then he realises that the top of his bed is lifting. It doesn’t lift much, he’s still mostly laying down, but now he can see the dusty blue walls of the room he’s in and the window opposite his bed that looks out onto the building opposite. 

More importantly though, he can see Todd, who is standing beside his bed, a white remote control in his hand and a worried expression on his face. He looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes. His clothes are rumpled and his stubble dark and Dirk wonder how long he’s been sitting in the red plastic chair beside his bed. 

“Is that better?” Todd asks, “Or do you want to go back down? Or sit up more?” Todd sounds almost cautious and Dirk doesn’t understand why.

“’s good,” Dirk says. His voice is weaker than he thought it would be and he’s surprised by how croaky he sounds, but his words aren’t slurred which is a considerable improvement over the last time he spoke. Todd’s worried expression fades and he visibly sags with relief. 

“When?” Dirk asks him, and he’d meant to ask what day it is but his thoughts are muddled and the sentence doesn’t form as he had intended it to. His mind is slow and heavy and although he isn’t as dizzy as he was before, the room isn’t quite as straight as he thinks it normally is. 

“It’s, erm, 6.54 pm,” Todd says, checking his watch. Dirk can’t remember what day it was when he had gone missing and doesn’t know how long have passed since then, so Todd’s answer has very little meaning, but he nods all the same because doesn’t have the energy to explain. 

“’s all gloopy,” he says instead, and Todd looks at him with his head tilted to the side in confusion. “My head, it’s... pancake gloop…” he trails off but this time Todd seems to have understood what he meant. 

“Yeah, you’ve got a skull fracture,” he explains, his eyebrows furrowed slightly, “and a concussion, quite a bad one really, and you’ve had general anaesthetic, and morphine, so…”

“Pancake gloop,” Dirk finishes for him and Todd smiles at him sadly and nods like he’s just given the most reasonable description in the world. The concussion makes sense, and so does the morphine, and he isn’t overly surprised to learn of the skull fracture, but the anaesthetic is a mystery. 

“Surgery?” he asks, because while that would be the most obvious reason for him to have had a general anaesthetic, he can’t think of the reason for it. 

“On your arm, it was quite impressively broken, they had to pin it,” explains Todd. Dirk does remember his arm hurting when he was walking back to Todd’s apartment, now that he thinks about it, and he vaguely remembers there being a bend in it where there really shouldn’t have been one. 

“Pin it?” he asks, looking down at his heavily bandaged, but straightened, right arm. He stretches his fingers experimentally, and finds they’re surprisingly stiff. 

“Erm yeah, with screws and metal plates, you know?” Dirk lifts his arm, twisting it try and getter better look but he can’t see anything other than bandages and what he assumes are stitches are pulling uncomfortably so he stops. 

“Careful,” Todd says, and he rests the arm back on the covers, wincing because, now he’s thinking about it, his arm actually is rather sore. He’s feeling rather tired too, he realises. He rests back into his pillows and his eyelids flutter of their own accord. He keeps them open because although he is tired and his mind is slow and muddled, he doesn’t want to leave Todd just quite yet. 

“I’m a robot,” he mumbles sleepily, smiling up at Todd despite himself. Todd smiles too. 

“Do you mean a cyborg?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. Dirk can’t remember what the difference is, or if he had ever known what the difference was, but Todd knows such things and so is probably correct. 

“Hmm, yeah, that,” he says, and his eyes flutter closed without him meaning to. He opens them again to find Todd’s smile has fallen. 

“Why don’t you have a nap,” he suggests, “You might feel less pancake-y afterwards?” 

“’ don’t feel pancake-y, Todd, just like their gloop,” Dirk mumbles and he attempts to raise an eyebrow but it takes more concentration than he thinks he is capable of and he isn’t sure if he manages it or not. 

“It’s called syrup,” Todd corrects. He’s smiling again, but his eyes look sad and Dirk doesn’t understand why. 

“’s rude to tease people when they’re ill.” 

“If you’re ill, you should be sleeping,” counters Todd, raising an eyebrow of his own. Dirk glares with as much force as he can muster, but his eyelids droop more than he had intended and he thinks it probably ruins the effect a little.

“Why…” He had meant to ask Todd why he keeps telling him to sleep, it seems kind of rude seeing as he’s only just woken up, but between the concussion and the morphine and the general anaesthetic he isn’t really thinking straight and he can’t find the words. Todd seems to realise what he had meant though. 

“Because you look exhausted?” Dirk is exhausted, it’s a struggle to keep his eyes from closing and even thinking is an effort. He doesn’t want to sleep again yet though, he’s only been awake a few minutes, and he doesn’t know how long Todd is going to stay. Todd is still standing over him and he blinks blearily up at him.

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Todd, because by some miracle, he seems to understand the problem entirely. Dirk’s heart does a funny little jump at the news and he smiles sleepily. He holds out a hand and Todd takes it, giving it a little squeeze. 

“Now get some sleep,” he says, gently, “I’ll be here when you wake, I promise.” 

Dirk’s eyes drift shut again and, this time, he doesn’t bother to reopen them. He sighs into his pillow and tightens his grip on the hand holding his and for the first time in a while, falls asleep of his own accord.


	4. Shaking Left Hand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wakes again briefly some time later, but both Farah and Todd have left and he is alone. He finds he doesn’t really mind, he knows they’ll be back later and he’s still really very tired and he quickly falls asleep again. He spends a lot of his time asleep at the moment, he realises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out this last chapter was a mega-chapter, so I've split it in two. The second half, and the last chapter of the story should be up in a few days

The room is darker when he next wakes, and when he opens his eyes, he realises the main lights set into the ceiling above him are off. He doesn’t understand why, but he finds he prefers it to the brightness he had woken up in before. 

The room is quieter too, and it takes him a second to realised that the beeping of his heart monitor has stopped. He wonders if maybe they’ve decided he doesn’t need monitoring any more, but when he looks at the screen he sees the coloured lines are still jumping in time with his heartbeat. It takes him a moment to notice the mute symbol flashing in the corner. 

It’s quieter outside his room too, the normal hustle and bustle of the hospital has died and the corridor is silent and devoid of activity. For a second, he is confused by the darkness and quietness of the hospital and then he realises, really quite suddenly, that it must be night time. He’s almost worried by how long it had taken him to put together such simple clues. 

He’s startled from his thoughts by a snuffling sound coming from beside him. Frowning, he lifts his heavy head and turns towards the noise to see a person is slumped in the red plastic chair beside his bed. His heart clenches in his chest. 

Seconds pass like hours, but then, as his eyes adjust to the darkened room, he realises he knows the figure sitting beside his bed.

“Todd?” His frown deepens when he notices that Todd’s eyes closed and his head is hanging down against his chin. It takes him a few beats to realise that he’s sleeping. It doesn’t look a very comfortable position for sleeping in and Dirk wonders why he has chosen to sleep there when he has a perfectly good bed at home. 

Todd stirs in the seat, grumbles something, and then wakes fully with a start. He looks confused at first, as if he can’t quite remember where he is or why he’s there, and then his gaze locks on Dirk and his eyebrows furrow.

“Dirk, are you alright?” he whispers, getting up from the chair. He stretches and his back pops loudly. Dirk nods against his pillow before he even considers the question. 

“It’s night time?” he says, and he’d more meant to ask why Todd was sleeping there and not in his bed, but his thoughts are still muddled and it doesn’t come out quite right. 

“Yeah, it is.” There’s a pause. “Do you need something?” 

Dirk considers saying yes, because his throat is dry and sore and his head is aching and his arm is throbbing, but none of that is actually very important right now and he shakes his head against the pillow.

“You should go home,” he says instead, looking up at Todd with bleary eyes. Todd frowns and at first Dirk doesn’t know why, and then his mind flitters back to their earlier conversation and he realises that Todd has stayed because he asked him to. “’s okay, ‘m not a child.” He’d been trying to sound nonchalant, but he’s tiring already and the words come out almost slurred. Todd seems too tired to notice though. 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks hesitantly. He’s chewing his lip worriedly. 

Dirk nods against his pillows. His eyes have started to droop again and the ever-present headache is becoming increasingly unpleasant. He’s barely been awake a couple of minutes and he’s already longing for the void of unconsciousness again. 

Todd glances back at the red chair. He looks torn, probably between the idea of his bed back home and the thought of leaving Dirk alone when Dirk had specifically asked him not to. 

“Go,” Dirk repeats, and after a second, Todd’s gaze returns from the chair. 

“Okay. I’ll be back in the morning, yeah?” he says, and he sounds almost guilty. Dirk doesn’t understand why he’d be feeling guilty.

He nods again and his eyes flutter closed of their own accord. There’s a pause and then Todd sighs almost shakily.

“Good night, Dirk,” he says quietly, and then, after another pause, there’s the sound of footsteps on the tiled floor. 

“Todd?” Dirk says, and he forces his leaden eyelids to flutter open again. Todd looks back from the doorway and for a second, their eyes lock. 

“Thank you,” Dirk says, his voice soft. 

Todd looks almost as if he’s about to turn back into the room, but instead he nods once and then walks from the room, leaving Dirk alone once again. 

 

As promised, Todd returns the next morning. 

Dirk doesn’t quite know when he returned, he hadn’t been there when the doctor had woken him up to ask him questions he should probably have known the answers to, and nor is he there when a nurse comes and gives him a tray of unappetising breakfast, but somewhere between then and when he wakes up next, Todd has settled himself back in the red chair beside his bed.

“Morning,” he says, and his voice although stronger than before, it still horribly croaky with disuse. Todd looks up from his phone, and when he looks up, Dirk realises he’s smiling, and today it seems to make it to his eyes. 

“Hey Dirk, how are you feeling?” he asks, pushing himself to his feet and walking to stand beside the bed. 

Dirk considers the question. He’s feeling better than he had the day before, his thoughts are slightly less muddled but his mind is still slow and the morphine isn’t numbing the pounding in his head as much as he would like. His memories of what happened are still foggy too, and he remembers being in a warehouse, but he still doesn’t have any idea how he had ended up there in the first place. For the first time since he woke up in the hospital, he feels he really needs to know what he had been doing when he had been taken. 

“Am I on a case?” he asks, frowning. Todd blinks at the sudden change of topic and then his eyes widen in alarm as he realises what Dirk has said. 

“No, Dirk, you’re resting,” he says, and although his voice is still soft, the words are firm. 

Dirk shakes his head because Todd seems to have misunderstood his question entirely. The movement hurts but knowing why he had been taken by the men in the first place suddenly feels terribly important. His heart stutters in his chest and the beeping of the heart monitor picks up accordingly.

“No, before the warehouse? They said I was investigating?” he says, and he tries to sit up a little more but Todd lays a hand on his shoulder, gently pushing him back down. 

“I don’t think you were on a case” Todd looks confused, and Dirk realises that he probably doesn’t know what had happened to him when he was missing, and so neither the warehouse or the they would make any sense to him.

Dirk groans in frustration and tries to sit up again. Todd lets him this time and he regrets it almost instantly as the room tilts and his vision swims. 

“I must have been. It’s… I think it was important, Todd?” He tries to think back to what had happened before he had woken up in the warehouse but even thinking worsens the pounding in his head and his memories are muddled and all he thinks he can remember is a cat. He suddenly realises how much he dislikes the muddled, blank spots in his memories “I can’t remember what happened, it’s all, I can’t-” 

“Dirk, it’s alright!”

“No, it’s not, I can’t remember! I can’t-”

Dirk quietens abruptly because although he wants to protest, to tell Todd that he’s wrong, that he must have been investigating something, maybe sitting up hadn’t such a good idea after all and the room is spinning more than it was before and he’s suddenly feeling rather sick. His head is throbbing almost unbearably and he can feel himself swaying and the room suddenly lurches to the side. Todd catches him before he falls over the side of his bed. 

“Maybe you should lay back down.” Todd suggests, and Dirk finds himself being forcefully returned to his bed with gentle hands before he has a chance to object. He doesn’t want to lay back down, he wants to know what happened to lead him in to that warehouse but his head is hurting awfully and he feels really quite sick and he doesn’t have the strength to fight back. The adrenalin that spurred him upright had dissipated as quickly as it had come.

“I don’t feel very well?” he nearly whispers and suddenly the headache and the nausea and the sluggish and muddled workings of his brain is all too much and the emotions bubble over and he lets out a noise that’s closer to a sob than he had expected it to be.

He can hear Todd shushing him but he sounds distant, and then Todd’s hand finds his and he grasps it back hard enough that the cannula pulls painfully in the back of his hand but he can’t bring himself to loosen his grip. 

“Dirk, it’s alright, you’re going to be fine,” Todd’s saying, his thumb gently rubbing circles over the back of Dirks knuckles. Dirk forces his eyes open and looks up at Todd. His vision is blurred again, half due to tears, but it doesn’t clear when he blinks. He feels drained, both emotionally and physically, but the mysterious case he might have been on when he was kidnapped just won’t leave the forefront of his muddled mind.

“How can I solve the case if I can’t remember what it was?” he whispers, still grasping Todd’s hand like a lifeline. His voice sounds thick even to his own ears. Todd’s gaze holds his for a second, and then he sighs sadly.

“Dirk, if anyone can solve a case without knowing what it is, it’s you,” he says softly, and gives his hand a gentle squeeze.

He holds Todd hand until he falls asleep again. It doesn’t take long because he’s dizzy and hurting and exhausted by his unexpected show of emotion. 

 

Todd wakes him up again some time later because the police have heard he’s awake and want to ask him questions. Todd helps to prop him up in his bed and then the police are there and Todd has to leave. He doesn’t want Todd to go and he protests because his muddled and half-asleep mind doesn’t understand. Todd shushes him and tells him he’ll be just outside and then, reluctantly, leaves as the police have asked. 

The policemen are kind and patient and repeat the questions he misses and he tries to explain what little he remembers about his kidnapping but he’s barely awake and his head is swimming and he’s not sure how much sense he is making. They ask him questions about the men and the warehouse that he doesn’t know the answers to and they tell him it’s okay despite the frustrated expressions they pull when they think he isn’t looking. 

They don’t stay very long in the end, and leave disappointed because he still remembers worryingly little about his time in the warehouse and almost nothing from before. Dirk would have helped if he could, but thinking hurts and the memories still don’t form however hard he tires. 

He doesn’t like not being able to remember.

 

Todd returns as soon as the police leave, and Dirk’ smiles sleepily, but then his expression falters as he realises a man in a white coat has followed Todd into the room. Dirk would rather he hadn’t because he’s growing weary of the persistent headache and he’s still feeling unusually emotional and he’d really like to have another nap. He tires quickly now, he finds, and he wonders how much of it is to do with the drugs they keep pumping into his system and how much of it is to do with the head injury. 

Todd looks almost apologetic as the man introduces himself as Dr Shepard, and explains that he was his surgeon. 

He talks to them about the surgery on his arm, but Dirk’s tired and hurting and he can’t quite bring himself to concentrate enough to take any of what the man is saying. The surgeon then takes his arm and removes the heavy bandages to reveal the swollen and bruised limb inside. He examines it briefly, and then fits a supporting splint and gives him a sling to keep it elevated. Dirk is pleased once the man is finished, half because his arm is really beginning to hurt from all the attention, and half because he’d found the sight of the black lines of stitches crawling over his arm like ants slightly sickening.

The surgeon gives him some physiotherapy exercises to do too, which somehow involve a battered looking Rubik’s cube. Dirk takes the cube in his aching right hand because the man tells him to, and it isn’t until he starts turning the coloured plastic faces that he realises how little strength and coordination he has left in his fingers.

He curls up on his side as soon as the surgeon leaves because he’s exhausted and hurting and he doesn’t want to see the sympathetic looks Todd keeps giving him when he thinks he isn’t looking. It isn’t long before he falls asleep again.

 

Farah visits him just as a nurse is bringing him his second meal of the day. She apologises for not visiting sooner, and explains that she’s been working with the police, trying to find a lead on who might have taken him. She says they haven’t found anything so far (which isn’t exactly news to him, he’d spoken to the police only hours earlier) and promises that she’s not going to stop looking for the men until she finds them. Dirk thinks she sounds almost distressed.

He stays mostly silent during her visit, at first because he’s busy picking at his lunch, but then just because he’s tired and in pain. Farah is still there, still talking about the investigation into his kidnapping with Todd, when he finally loses his battle with exhaustion. 

 

He wakes again briefly some time later, but both Farah and Todd have left and he is alone. He finds he doesn’t really mind, he knows they’ll be back later and he’s still really very tired and he quickly falls asleep again. He spends a lot of his time asleep at the moment, he realises.

The rest of the day passes in stops and starts and Dirk finds he’s able to remember very little of what had happened in any sort of detail. He’s always said time was meaningless to him, but today he finds himself unable to keep track of it however hard he tries. 

 

That evening, he catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror as Todd helps him back from his first trip to the toilet and he stops, blinking at his reflection. 

“You alright?” Todd asks, stopping too. He sounds worried, which isn’t unusual, and Dirk thinks he’s probably wearing an expression to match but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the mirror to check even if he wanted to. The man in the mirror stares back, and he knows it’s him, he hasn’t caused that much damage to his brain, but he can’t quite connect with his reflection because it just doesn’t look like him. 

The reflection’s hair is darkened and clumping with grease and blood and his chin is grey with stubble which only accentuates the sickly sort of pallor of his skin. The bruise on his forehead and the stitched and scabbing cut leading up into his hairline don’t help his appearance either, and although he remembers being punched back in the warehouse, the swollen and blacked eye still catch him by surprise. He exhales shakily and curls his shaking left hand into a fist.

“I didn’t realise…” he starts, his voice small and then trails off simply because he doesn’t know what to say. His chest feels tight and his stomach is twitching as if the man in the warehouse is still punching him for his attention. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Todd’s reflection in the mirror, standing ever so slightly behind him and staring up at the mirror too. His expression is carefully neutral, but Dirk notices that his blue eyes are sad again. 

“You’ll be better soon,” Todd says quietly and with an air of almost forced sounding confidence. His hand gently pries open Dirk’s shaking left fist and grasps it tightly. Dirk squeezes back and, finally, he finds the strength to tear his eyes away from the image of the tired and beaten man in the glass.

 

Farah phones Todd just as he is about to leave for the night and although Dirk doesn’t have the concentration to try and work out what her tinny voice is saying, can hear her the excitement in her tone and Todd smiles at whatever it is she has said so it must be something good. 

“Hang on, I’ll put you on loudspeaker,” Todd says, and there’s a beep and then suddenly Dirk can hear Farah too. Her voice is high and fast as she explains that the police have got a lead in the investigation of whoever took him to the warehouse and that they’ve found the warehouse too, which, as it turns out, had been used to store a spectacularly large quantity of drugs. Dirk wonders why he had been investigating a drugs ring, it’s a step above from his usual cases of mysteriously impossible happenings and missing pets, but at least he now knows what he had been doing when he had been taken.

Todd leaves soon after the phone call is over because it’s late and they’re both tired and Dirk’s speech is slowly becoming more jumbled the later it gets. He’s asleep almost before Todd has left the room, and although he’s hurting and his head is awfully muddled and the room spins sickeningly if he moves too fast, he falls asleep happy because at least he had been investigating something worthwhile when he got himself into such a mess.


	5. I am Icarus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you know why I’m Project Icarus?” he asks, his tone hard. His restless fingers resume turning the faces of the cube and the plastic clicks angrily in the quiet room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last part!!! A huge thank you to everyone who has read and commented and left kudos on this! 
> 
> Anyway, CHOO CHOO, here comes the angst train!!

When he wakes the next morning, Dirk can remember exactly what he was doing on the day he was kidnapped and the knowledge makes him curl up in his bed, a hollow ache in his chest. He knows the cases he ends up on are dangerous, it’s something he’s almost come to accept over the fifteen years since he escaped Blackwing, but this is different somehow. 

His life has always been filled with danger and destruction and there is nothing he can do to control it. In a way, he had become used to it, and he doesn’t mind so much anymore when he ends up hurt, because at least it normally means he’s solved the case and helped someone and that’s what’s important. He’s just the debug key of reality, after all. 

But what’s different now, is that he has people he cares about, Todd and Farah and Amanda, and he doesn’t know what he’d do if they got hurt because of him. He can’t stop the danger that surrounds him, he can’t stop the destruction that it causes, and he’s suddenly very, very aware that he is causing a very real risk to those he loves. He’s never considered before that even if he found people who cared for him and didn’t run away at the first opportunity, he would be putting their lives at risk just by existing.

He’s always been told he was dangerous, and now he realises that he is.

Riggins was right all along.

 

He’s still curled up on his side, his back to the door, when Todd arrives later that morning.

“Have you worked out how to solve it yet?” he asks in greeting, and Dirk assumes he is referring to the cube he’s got clutched tightly in his left hand. He rolls his head further into the pillow because he doesn’t want to speak to Todd, he just wants him to go home and never return because then he’ll be safe.

“Are you alright?” Todd asks him when he doesn’t reply. He sounds concerned. “Are you in pain?”

Dirk huffs into his pillow because Todd is right, he is in pain, both the physical sort Todd is referring to in his head and his arm, and the sort that he knows isn’t real but can feel burning in his chest all the same. There’s a pause and then the sound of footsteps as Todd moves closer to his bed.

“Dirk, are you alright?” he asks again, his tone more urgent than before. “Do I need to find a doctor?” Dirk groans and gives up ignoring Todd because Todd is clearly determined not to be ignored. He rolls on to his back and looks up at Todd with sad eyes. Todd is frowning down at him, his eyebrows knitted together in worry.

“You need to leave,” Dirk says, and he’s surprised by how steady he manages to keep his voice.

 “What?” Todd’s frown deepens. “Why, what’s happened?”

“Please, just go,” he says, thickly, and closes his eyes against the look of hurt and confusion on Todd’s face. His voice cracked a little, that time.

There’s the sound of footsteps again, and at first, he thinks that Todd is leaving and his heart gives a funny little leap of so many emotions all rolled into one, but then he hears the feet of the chair beside his bed scraping against the plastic floor and he realises that Todd hasn’t left after all. He opens his eyes again and looks over at the chair Todd is sitting in. He just looks stubborn now.

“I can’t tell if this is because of the drugs, or the concussion, or if you’re just sulking, but I’m not going to go anywhere until you tell me what’s upsetting you,” he says and folds his arms across his chest as if to accentuate his point.  

Dirk almost wants to cry because telling Todd to leave is possibly the most selfless thing he has done in his entire life and it seems he’s unable to do even that right.

“Why are you so stubborn!” he says instead, his voice breaking.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” Todd asks in return. His voice is soft and Dirk’s heart clenches in his chest. He groans in frustration and sits up. The room spins slightly.

“Todd, please, you need to go away from me and you can’t come back, it isn’t safe!”

“It isn’t… What are you talking about?” Todd’s expression has changed to one of confusion again. 

“Just go, Todd, I’m trying to save your life, I’m trying-”

“Dirk, what’s happened? Todd exclaims over the top of him, his voice raised. Dirk stills at the outburst and their eyes lock briefly before Todd looks away.

“Sorry, I shouldn’t shout, you’re…” he trails off, flapping his hand towards the hospital bed in explanation. He looks almost embarrassed. Dirk looks back down at his hands and the cube he holds in them. He’s twisting one face of the cube round and round with the index finger of his left hand. There’s a pause, and it isn’t awkward, but it isn’t exactly close to comfortable either.

Then Dirk sighs shakily.

“Do you know how this happened, Todd?” he asks, his gaze still focused on the cube. Todd looks up at the sudden change in conversation.

“You’ve remembered?” Dirk shoots him a glare because _obviously_ he has remembered, why would he have asked otherwise. Todd seems to realise and backtracks. “Sorry, go on, what was the case?”

Dirk shakes his head minutely and looks back down at his lap. “There was no case,” he admits, bitterly, his tone tight with emotion.

Todd frowns in confusion. “Then, how-”

“I followed a cat, Todd, to the warehouse. A bloody cat. I wasn’t even investigating.” Dirk’s voice breaks again as he says it, because there it is, there’s the problem, because he even when he isn’t on a case, the danger that follows insistently through his life still doesn’t stop. The cube in his hands jams and he pushes harder and then the face gives way with a jolt. The sudden movement _hurts_ and he gasps involuntarily and drops the cube onto the bedsheets.

“Careful!” Todd exclaims. He reaches out, and Dirk isn’t sure if he’d been reaching for the cube or his hand, but then he seems to think better of it and the hand goes to run through his hair instead.

There’s a pause, and then Dirk’s eyes return to his hands and he picks up the cube again, his grip on it is tight enough to turn his knuckles white.

“Do you know why I’m Project Icarus?” he asks, his tone hard. His restless fingers resume turning the faces of the cube and the plastic clicks angrily in the quiet room. His broken wrist aches with the force but he can’t bring himself to care.

“You’re Dirk Gently,” says Todd firmly and Dirk scoffs.

“No, Todd, I am Icarus. The man who flew too close to the sun, always in way over his head.” He laughs bitterly. “I’m not even flying though, I’m falling, uncontrollably and continuously, and it isn’t something that is ever going to stop. I’m always surrounded by death and destruction and terrifyingly impossible situation there’s nothing I can do about it!” He breaks off sharply and exhales shakily and then looks up and his eyes meet Todd’s once more. “Riggins was right, I am dangerous.”

“You’re not-”

“No, Todd, I am! People get hurt when I’m around, people die! Which is why you need to leave. And never come back. I can’t stay here waiting for the day when it’s you, or Farah, or Amanda...” He breaks off, his eyes steely. When he speaks again his voice is softer. “You’re safer without me. You all are.”

“ _Dirk_ -” Todd protests, his eyes wide. He sounds pained.

Dirk glances down again because he can’t look at Todd’s wounded expression any longer and then his heart wrenches in his chest because the Rubik’s cube is somehow, miraculously, solved in his hands.

Suddenly, he hates the universe more than he ever has before because he’s finally got friends and he’s finally happy and yet it still can’t leave him alone. He throws the cube in frustration and because he can’t bear the sight of it and buries his head in his hands, his fingers entwining in his hair. The cube hits the wall with a crack and bounces off the plasterboard and falls to the floor with a clatter.  

“I can’t control anything!” he cries, and the unfairness of the universe and the pounding in his head and the throbbing in his arm and the sickening spinning of the room is suddenly all too much and his eyes fill with angry tears. His hands pull at his hair and his broken arm screams in protest but he doesn’t care because it’s nothing compared to the feeling of his heart breaking with the _injustice_ of it all.

And then there are hands around his wrists, gently prying his shaking hands from his hair and he doesn’t quite know how it happens but suddenly he’s sobbing uncontrollably into Todd’s shoulder, his arms trapped awkwardly between their chests. Todd is holding him tightly, one hand rubbing soft circles on his back and the other pressed against his shoulder blades. He’s shushing him, and Dirk’s blood is rushing far too loudly in his ears for him to hear what he’s saying but the tone is soft and gentle and it somehow makes him sob harder.

His head is telling him to push Todd away and tell him to leave because every second he stays with him is one second longer that he is putting him in danger, but his heart just wants him to curl up and sob into Todd shoulder and in that moment, he is selfish and he just can’t bear to pull away.

Todd doesn’t pull away either.

Dirk doesn’t know if they stay there for seconds or minutes, time has become almost meaningless, but then, eventually, his tears slow and the room comes back to him and he can hear the racing beeps of the heart monitor and feel the pounding ache in his head and smell the familiar scent of Todd’s washing detergent on the hoodie his face is pressed against.

“I’ll miss you so much,” he whispers into Todd’s shoulder. Todd’s hand pauses on his back.

“Do you remember the conversation we had in Bergsberg?” he says, quietly. “The one where I said you’d changed my life?”

Dirk does remember the conversation, but he shakes his head against Todd’s shoulder because he realises where Todd is heading. “I’m dangerous.”

“You’re not dangerous, Dirk. You’re surrounded by danger and death, I know, but that doesn’t make _you_ dangerous.”

Dirk considers what Todd has said, and in a way, it is true, he himself isn’t dangerous, but that doesn’t stop the danger that follows him wherever he goes. He shakes his head again.

“You’re not safe with me.”

“But what if I don’t care about that?”

“I care.” Dirk’s voice catches and his presses his face harder into Todd’s hoodie. Todd’s hand resumes the gentle circles over his back.

“My life was meaningless before I met you, Dirk.” Todd says, and his voice sounds thicker than usual, like he’s getting a cold or trying to fight back emotion. Dirk would imagine it’s the latter. “I spent all my time working as a bellhop to pay for my sister’s medication because I’d guilt-tripped my parents into bankrupting themselves just because I couldn’t be bothered to work.

“And then you came along, and you showed me the most amazing things, you showed me life is what you make of it, even when the universe isn’t always on your side. You’ve had an awful life Dirk, nothing has been fair for you, and yet you keep going, you don’t give up, and I’m not ready to give up either. I would rather be with you and risk my life every day than go back to how I was before.” He pauses and sighs and then the arms Dirk can feel wrapped around him leave and then there are hands on his shoulders as Todd gently pushes them apart.

His eyes feel sticky with tears when he blinks them open and it takes longer than it should for his vision to focus, but when it does, he realises Todd is staring right at him. Todd’s hands slide down to hold his and he grasps back so hard his knuckles go white and the cannula pulls in the back of his left hand and his right wrist screams with the strain.

“You’re my friend, Dirk, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I would rather die than leave you. So, stop thinking you’re dangerous, stop thinking so little of yourself, and, please, Dirk, _please_ , stop telling me to leave.”

Todd’s eyes are bright with emotion as he finishes, and for a second, Dirk feels as if the world around him has paused because he isn’t dangerous, Todd has said so, and because despite the death and danger that follows him, Todd is apparently determined to stay. He’s ecstatic and terrified and guilty and hopeful all at once because Todd isn’t leaving, he won’t leave, and as amazing as that is, it doesn’t change the danger he is in if he stays. He can feel his heart racing in his throat and hear his blood rushing in his ears but his chest is tight he can’t seem to remember how to breathe.

“Dirk?” Todd says, and then, suddenly, time seems to start again, and Dirk exhales shakily and in that moment, he realises that, as selfish as it is, his heart isn’t capable of letting Todd go, and that’s okay, because Todd isn’t capable of letting him go either. He feels exhausted and hollow and he droops forwards, his head landing back on the salt-stained shoulder of Todd’s hoodie. Todd’s hands release his and settle back around him. The hug is softer than before.

“You’re a great friend, Todd,” he says, thickly, and sniffles into the hoodie. Todd’s hand resumes rubbing gentle circles on his back.

“I know,” he says, softly, as Dirk’s tear-swollen eyelids flutter closed against his shoulder. “And one day, Dirk, maybe you’ll accept that you’re a pretty good friend too.”  


End file.
